Comment by rudolftheone

This sounds like the 'Future Time Reference' hypothesis by Keith Chen (2013). It’s indeed a fascinating idea, but it’s essentially an example of Galton’s problem (treating related cultures/languages as independent data points).

What makes this story (scientifically) great is that Chen himself co-authored a follow-up study just two years later [1] to rigorously test his own theory. When they re-analyzed the data using mixed-effects models to control for cultural phylogeny and relatedness, the correlation between grammar and savings pretty much disappeared.

They concluded the original finding was likely a spurious correlation.

It turns out that cultural history drives both the language we speak and our saving habits, rather than the grammar causing the behavior.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...